


Between Two Shores

by mary__anne



Category: Normal People - Sally Rooney
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:08:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24162586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary__anne/pseuds/mary__anne
Summary: 'And we'll be okay.'Won't they?
Relationships: Connell Waldron/Marianne Sheridan
Comments: 17
Kudos: 77





	Between Two Shores

**Author's Note:**

> I truly can't believe that with all the hype surrounding the book and the TV show there is only 2 fics for them? Unacceptable. 
> 
> Title taken from the album by Glen Hansard, an incredible Irish musician that you should all listen to.

When Connell leaves for New York she goes with him to the airport but she doesn’t go inside. She volunteers to stay in the car instead whilst Lorraine accompanies Connell as he checks in and fusses over whether he’s forgotten to pack anything. Connell tells her that it’s fine, that he can just replace anything he’s left behind when he’s out there. Marianne does get out of the car though, just for a few minutes, just beforehand.

Connell sets his duffel bag down on the pavement. Around them holiday-makers are scrambling out of taxis and slamming doors. Marianne flinches as a family wheeling large suitcases behind them narrowly miss the spot where they’re standing. She looks up at his face – it’s pulled into a frown, there are purplish shades to the skin under his eyes. She pulls her jacket around her more tightly and smiles.

Have a safe flight, she says.

Oh, thanks. I’ll let you know when I’m at my layover.

Yes, okay.

His hands, dangling at his side without the bag to occupy them, twitch a little.

I'll Skype you. Like Sweden, he says.

Marianne nods and glances back at the car behind her, where she’s left the driver’s seat door open. It felt odd when Connell hauled his luggage down the small staircase at Lorraine’s house earlier and handed her his car keys. She can feel them in her jeans pocket now, pressing into her skin, jagged.

Yes, she says. Of course we can.

She's not sure if he’s going to try and kiss her or not. She watches him as he hauls in a deep breath and expects him to say something else, but then he just releases it again and bends slowly down to pick up his bag. Lorraine, who is staring hard at her phone a few metres away in an unsubtle attempt to give them some privacy, has the rest of Connell’s stuff. When he straightens up again his face is carefully, jarringly blank.

I hope it’s everything you want.

The corner of his mouth twitches Marianne notices, but nothing else. His face is a calm still life, a portrait of respectability, like the ones from the old masters they saw together in Vienna.

Thanks, Marianne. Me too. Likewise.

She expected to get a last smile from him she realises, as he turns and heads through the glass doors to departures. She realises that his going away didn’t really feel real until this moment, when the next time he smiles she will not be near enough to reach and touch his cheek, and his car keys are still sharp against her thigh.

/

Towards the end of the summer Marianne moves into the student accommodation her scholarship supplies her with. Joanna helps her carry the boxes up the many flights of stairs and declares that the small flat is pretty much what she expected, and that Marianne should buy some plants to go by the windowsill.

It's not the same building as Connell’s old room, the one she moved into earlier in the year, but the Georgian architecture is familiar, although it’s been stripped from the interior, so only the big central sash window remains. The walls are the same sterilised white, the kitchenette counters the same speckled grey. Everything about the layout is just slightly switched around, so it feels like she’s walking around Connell’s flat, except in a dream, where the sheets on the bed are the wrong colour and the door to the bathroom’s in the wrong place. When she wakes up after the first night and sees the window and the hooks on the door and the big fire notice sign taped to the wall, she rolls over and expects to see him there lying next to her too, before she remembers.

Marianne walks into campus and visits the library to pick up a textbook she was missing. She finds she can pick out the first years now, from the way they hover around the union buildings and hold flyers for nights out and college campus maps in their damp, nervous hands. She finds herself thinking was she ever that out of place looking, ever that young? And because she catches herself asking she knows she must have been, but that version of her feels very far away now. There’s an innocence to the first years that she finds repulsive somehow, so she skirts around them and when a pretty blonde girl, thick northern accent, asks her where she can find the engineering building, Marianne just shrugs and carries on walking.

She takes the book back to the flat and sits on her bed with her laptop on her knees. The time in New York is still early morning, so she doesn’t expect Connell to call anyway.

/

The mug of coffee is too hot, it’s scorching her fingertips, burning the prints right off, it feels like. Across from her, Sophie opens and then closes her mouth and has to set down her oat milk latte so it doesn’t spill.

Are you sure? She asks.

Yeah, I am, Marianne replies. She takes a studied nonchalant sip of her drink. I thought it might be good for me, she adds.

I mean sure, Sophie replies quickly. But, like, have you ever worked somewhere like that before?

No, Marianne says with a shrug. But it can’t be that hard, can it? 

That feels false, but it also feels like the right thing to say. Sophie picks up her coffee again and looks at her over the rim. She’s confused Marianne thinks, but also curious to see how the situation pans out. This is amusing for her. 

If you want to quit you have to give the manager enough notice, Sophie says sharply.

Marianne nods. Yes, of course, I know that. I will.

She’s never done that sort of thing before but she understands the concept.

/

Marianne thinks she has issues with object permanence. It’s something that babies struggle with when they’re born; understanding the fact that when their mother finally goes and takes an exhausted shower, that they’re not gone forever. Marianne sometimes feels like that still. When she’s away from Sligo, for example, her family feel like a not-quite real entity. Now that her mother hardly contacts her at all, it’s easy to simply fall into an existence where she simply has no family anyway, never did, what a shame.

This works even for Connell sometimes. She imagines him living out his day to day life in his small American apartment and he sometimes feels more like a fictional character than he does a real man and it feels unreal that he ever was inside her, that he ever loved her. She’s sage enough to know that this is probably some defence mechanism her mind has put in place.

Are you Connell’s Marianne, then? 

Marianne looks up from tying her apron to see a new colleague, one she hasn’t worked a shift with before. A pretty girl with curling red hair.

Connell Waldron, yeah? You’re herself? She says his name with a smile, she notices. Like an elbow in the gut, suddenly Connell is real again, not just a figment of her imagination in another continent. Marianne is made real by proxy. Connell’s not even here and just the mention of his name is enough to yank her back down to earth. She’s been drifting.

Oh, she says. Yes, I suppose I am. 

I knew you were herself. Saw your name on the rota and knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. He talked about you all the time.

Marianne raises her eyebrows. Did he? 

The other waitress blushes. Well, enough, she says. We used to offer him lifts home at night and he’d say no thanks, sure Marianne only lives ‘round the corner.

Right. I did.

There’s a pause. Marianne picks some cutlery out of the drawer and goes to the kitchen to fetch a bowl of hot water so she can start polishing. When she gets back the girl (her name must be Niamh – she thinks of the rota she has saved on her phone) is folding napkins on the small station next to her.

I heard he’s away in America now. Very fancy.

Yes, Marianne replies. Studying writing.

What, writing novels? 

I don’t know, Marianne answers truthfully. She doesn’t know what Connell is writing. He hasn’t sent her anything he’s been working on yet. She’s asked, but he avoided her question.

Well, tell him I said hello. I hope he remembers me. 

We broke up, Marianne replies. She doesn’t know why, exactly. It’s not like she won’t talk to Connell at some point soon but she’s exhausted by even the thought of mentioning Niamh; and by association his old life back in Ireland. She’s picked up his old life like a well-worn jumper and slipped it on – his old flat, his old job, even his old friends. Niall still lives in Dublin. He works in a small non-profit in the centre of town. Marianne saw him in the pub with Eileen a few days ago when she was out with Joanna and Evelyn. They stopped and chatted for a bit and Marianne’s even been asked over for dinner at Niall and Eileen’s new flat in a few weeks’ time.

Oh, says Niamh. Of course. I mean, it’s been years. Sorry.

Marianne smiles and takes the washing up bowl back to the kitchen. She needs to get the condiments out of the walk-in. When she’s inside she stands in the frigid air for longer than she should.


End file.
